I haven’t done this before, but I thought now was as good a time as any to set some yearly goals for myself. So, here we go:
Create more podcast episodes: I created the S&P ‘Fixed Income in 15’ podcast two years ago now and it’s grown from a few hours a month project with a dozen listeners into something that regularly draws tens of thousands of views.
It’s allowed me to meet some of the world’s leading investors. The good news is: the more high profile individuals agree to appear, the easy it becomes to attract other high profile individuals to appear. When I was pitching the idea of a ‘public recorded conversation’ to my boss, meeting Michael Milken, David Rubenstein or Mohamed El-Erian seemed a long way away.
In my entire working life of 14 years, publishing this podcast has given me the most bang for my buck in terms of impact, exposure and arguably enjoyment too.
So it makes senses to double down on what is so far a successful formula. With that in mind, I’m going to aim to up the quantity of podcast episodes by around 25-30% in 2022. I only record one episode a month so in reality it equates to 3-4 episode more per year. A workable number.
I don’t think I fully understood the power of the internet as a lever until now.
A great example of this is seniority of guest on the podcast, would Michael Milken entertain a 30min meeting with me? No, unless I was the CEO of a BioTech or Anti-Aging firm which fully aligned with his professional objectives.
Yet he would give me 30mins of his time if the meeting was recorded and distributed publicly.
That way he can leverage the conversation to be seen by thousands of people, making the best use of his half hour timeslot. It’s funny how the process works, once you get your head around this rationale it changes your perspective forever.
More high quality podcasts means more leverage, which attracts more high profile guests, which leads to more high quality podcasts, which leads to more leverage.
That’s my take anyway.
Start posting on Twitter: I’ve stalled on this topic for the past few years.
In some ways, Twitter looks like a powerful online tool to share ideas, comment on discussions and generally network with like-minded people online. In other ways, it looks like a time consuming, doom-scrolling black hole.
I’ve done some research on how to grow an account and the algorithm appears to heavily rely on frequency of posting. To grow you need to create 20-25 separate posts per day, which is not insignificant.
Time-wise it would mean dedicating 30-40mins a day to engaging on Twitter. As a platform it also sems quite argumentative. I have an account that I barely use (14 followers as of today…), but just by following others you can see lengthy ongoing debates that often seem pointless.
One-upmanship on which is the better cryptocurrency or political debates that don’t really go anywhere. So those are the downsides.
The main upside is the leverage building an account could have in the future. Back to the ‘internet as leverage’ topic, Twitter is another channel which, if executed correctly, allows you to engage and be heard by individuals who would never usually be in your rolodex.
Exposure to new individuals, ideas and opportunities – at scale.
If I want this to be something that actually happens, I’ll need to schedule in a time each day to tweet. As ridiculous as that sounds. I’m going to start with 15mins a day scheduled to post on Twitter, see where that takes me.
Meet Arnold Schwarzenegger: don’t ask me when, don’t ask me where and don’t ask me how – but meeting The Austrian Oak has to be on the 2022 goal list.
Arnold is one of my personal heroes for a number of reasons.
The guy is a the personification of hard work and determination. He made a goal of becoming the strongest man in the world, trained for a decade and won a combined 12 Mr. Olympia and Mr. Universe titles. He made a goal of becoming an actor and became one of the highest grossing actors of all time. He made a goal of moving into politics and was elected into one of the most influential seats in U.S politics as Governor of California.
When I say meet, I don’t mean a quick selfie and “I loved you in Terminator”. I mean actually talk to him for a decent amount of time about his approach to business, life and Kindergarten Cop.
The good news is I have a lead on this meeting.
I spoke to Arnold’s agent at the end of 2021 and she agreed to pass on an invitation for him to join the S&P podcast. Typically he takes more than 6 months to respond and in many cases he simply doesn’t respond.
Probability wise, I give this goal a 3% likelihood of happening in 2022. But it’s not 0%, which is something.
Play more Poker: the more I play poker, the more I like playing poker.
I’m not great at it – last week I prematurely folded a pair of Kings – but the phycological aspect of the game is fascinating.
Anticipating the probability of someone’s hand and moreover how that person will play their hand, seems to be the name of the game. It’s a rare occurrence when you feel like you’re actually learning life skills when playing a game.
I’ve tried to justify learning life skills when playing FIFA or Mario Kart, but lying to yourself at such an epic scale is not possible.
The elephant in the room here is the monetary prize on offer, as playing with money ensures you don’t go ‘all in’ on every hand. Skin in the game, as it was once known.
That is not to say I play with large amounts, typically it’s a game with school friends where everyone puts in £20 each. Not exactly the high rollers table, but a good fun and something I need to do more of.
Continue this blog: writing consistently about topics I’m interested in and sharing learnings others might find useful is the objective of this blog.
Once you write something down, then re-write it and re-write it again, it forces you to flesh out your ideas in full. Which personally I find valuable, as I can’t just say “Man United’s transfer spend over the past 10 years has been awful”.
For a piece of writing to be engaging it has to coherently convey an opinion or experience. In this instance, “in the past decade Man City have won 5 Premier League titles, Chelsea claimed 2 Premier League titles and 2 Champions League titles and Man United have 1 Premier League title to their name. Despite similar transfer spends – United £1.24Bn, City £1.38Bn, Chelsea £1,33Bn – United’s post-Ferguson transfer strategy has been largely unsuccessful”.
In addition to helping you create a structured argument, the blog is a bit of a litmus test of the internet’s capability to scale.
Yes, I’m dragging you kicking and screaming back to the ‘internet as leverage’ centre ground. Creating one blog post that is only read by 5-10 people seems worthwhile.
Lastly, the archiving factor appeals to me.
One thing I’ve taken from creating a podcast is that people often ask me about an episode from a year ago, “what was it like meeting…”.
If you keep creating content on the internet and let it accrue, once it resonates with someone they will probably mine through older episodes or posts. You end up building a small library of content, which creates more opportunity for reading, more viewing and ultimately more leverage.
An online asset that doesn’t necessarily pay you in cold hard cash, but provides a myriad of other benefits.
Conclusion: there you have it. A couple of 2022 goals for me laid out in writing for the first time ever.
See you on the other side.